🆕 Minimal Breaking Changes: A Smooth Upgrade

One of the highlights of Laravel 12 is its minimal breaking changes. If you're running Laravel 11, upgrading is easier than ever — most existing projects will require little to no modifications.

✅ Good to know: Laravel's upgrade path is stable and well-documented, making long-term maintenance easier for teams and solo devs alike.

🎁 New & Improved Starter Kits

Laravel 12 introduces modern starter kits with the latest frontend technologies. These kits are designed to help you get up and running quickly with tools you already love.

🔹 React Starter Kit

• Inertia.js + React 19

• TypeScript + Tailwind CSS

• Pre-configured with shadcn UI components

🔹 Vue Starter Kit

• Vue 3 + Inertia.js

• TypeScript + Tailwind CSS

• Uses shadcn-vue for UI components

🔹 Livewire Starter Kit

• Livewire 3 + Alpine.js

• Tailwind CSS + TypeScript

• Integrated with Flux UI

All kits come with built-in authentication, and optional WorkOS AuthKit integration for:

• Passkeys (passwordless login)

• Social logins

• Single Sign-On (SSO)

💡 Bonus: WorkOS is free for apps with up to 1M monthly active users.

⚡ Performance Upgrades

Laravel 12 isn’t just about new features — it’s also faster and more efficient.

✳️ xxHash for Faster Hashing

Laravel has replaced MD5 with xxHash, a blazing-fast non-cryptographic hash algorithm. This leads to significant speed improvements, especially in caching and unique ID generation.

✳️ UUIDv7 by Default

Models using the HasUuids trait will now use UUID version 7, which is time-ordered. This change improves database indexing and query performance.

👨‍💻 Enhanced Developer Experience

Laravel continues its tradition of making developers happy with productivity-focused updates.

✨ Eloquent ORM Improvements

• Better relationship handling

• Smarter eager loading

• More powerful query builder features

✨ Cleaner Dependency Injection

Using PHP 8’s property promotion, Laravel 12 makes dependency injection in controllers and services even cleaner.

✨ Unified Scaffolding

With the new php artisan scaffold command, you can generate:

• Models

• Migrations

• Controllers All in one go — no more jumping between commands!

🔐 Improved Security Features

Security is always a priority, and Laravel 12 brings new tools to lock things down.

🔸 Built-in MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication)

TOTP (Time-Based One-Time Password) is now built into Laravel out of the box.

🔸 Enhanced Encryption & Validation

Laravel 12 introduces stronger validation logic and updated encryption protocols for protecting sensitive data.

🌍 Real-Time Capabilities Expanded

Real-time features like broadcasting and event handling are now easier to implement and scale. Laravel 12 improves support for WebSockets, making it simpler to build:

• Live notifications

• Real-time dashboards

• Chat applications

🧪 Testing & Debugging

✅ Predictable Chunked Queries

Laravel 12 fixes a long-standing issue where chunked queries could exceed expected memory usage.

🤖 AI-Powered Debugging

A new AI-based debugging assistant provides real-time tips during runtime errors, making it easier to trace and fix issues.

☁️ Introducing Laravel Cloud (Beta)

Alongside Laravel 12, the team has unveiled Laravel Cloud — a one-click deployment platform tailored for Laravel apps.

Features:

• GitHub-based deployments

• PostgreSQL support (MySQL coming soon)

• Auto-scaling & performance monitoring

• Team-based project collaboration

📦 How to Install Laravel 12

To create a new Laravel 12 project, run:

This will install the latest version of Laravel with all the newest features.